Monday, July 18, 2005
10:16 PM

I attended the Trader's Expo in Chicago on July 14th and 15th.This was my first Expo but probably not my last. There were plenty of interesting exhibitors to see, new products too look at, and a chance to meet face to face some of the people who's products I am using or thinking about trying.

Ken Wood (Woodie) and Todd (TW) of WoodiesCCIclub fame gave a nice presentation on using the Commodity Channel Index (CCI) in trading decisions. CCI is a momentum indicator and Woodie has quite a following of traders using it to trade Emini futures. Remarkably the chat room and tons of documentation on trading the CCI are available for free. It was nice to meet some of the people in the CCI club in person.

I had a chance to talk with Chuck Thompson, president of eSignal as well as sit in on trading session on how to use "Advanced Get", an add-on product to eSignal. Yes, I use eSignal and would be pleased to recommend it. No, I do not receive compensation for any of these plugs in case anyone is wondering.

I also talked with the owner of Alaron, a commodities brokerage firm where I have my commodities account, the folks at Options Xpress and many other exhibitors too numerous to mention.

As some of you know, I am a subscriber to Minyanville. It was a nice chance to meet Todd Harrison (the founder of Minyanville) face to face as well as some of the other Minyanville professors that I Email regularly. If you are looking for "buy here/sell here recommendations", then Minyanville may not for you. OTOH if you are looking for insight on to why some of the big names in the business are doing what they are doing and why they are doing it, and want reasons and commentary and the ability to get answers to specific questions such as volatility trading from a lengthy list of top-notch professors, then Minyanville may indeed be for you.

With that thought, I want to thank Todd Harrison for taking a "time out" to talk with me for a half hour or so in a place where we would not get distracted. I also want to thank Fari Hamzei of Hamzei Analytics for spending nearly an entire hour with me talking about his propriety "CI" momentum indicator. Fari was kind enough to bring up eSignal Emini charts with his CI indicator and the CCI indicator beneath it. CCI and CI are similar (both are momentum indicators) but the CI indicator was far less choppy and as best as I can tell at a quick glance, far less prone to whipsaws than CCI. Note: there are other proprietary indicators that come with the package, CI being just one of them. CCI traders and momentum traders in general might wish to give this product a trial run. I intend to take a test drive sometime soon. I am really looking forward to it.

Finally, I had a chance to talk with Jon "Dr J" Najarian at Inside Options. For the record he really does look like this, but in real life with that big warm smile, I was not worried about a sudden kung fu attack. In all seriousness, this is another product that I intend to try very soon. Dr. J's track record is nothing short of amazing.

Other than these trade shows, where else can you get a chance to meet the owners and top executives of some of these exciting products, as well as find out new products and services that you did not even know existed? If you get a chance, you might consider adding one of the trade shows on your agenda.

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